When I chose my World Race route, South Africa was a big part of my decision making process. I spent a few months there last summer, and really wanted to come and see the people that I’d formed relationships with. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to visit those people in Cape Town this month, but the Lord blessed me abundantly through a completely different experience in this wonderful country. Here’s an update on my favorite month so far, in Jeffrey’s Bay with “Uniting Christian Children Association.”
The day we were picked up by our hosts, neither were wearing shoes, both were making outlandish jokes from the start, and they told us we’d be starting our week with a family braai. We knew from the start that it would be an incredible month. Not only did we have simple pleasures like beds and a refrigerator, we lived a two minute walk from the beach and our hosts supernaturally quickly became family. That’s all without even mentioning our awesome ministry.
Our time in South Africa is likely the hardest my team has worked so far on the race. We were camp counselors on the weekends, wrangling and teaching over 100 campers from 6am-11pm. It was totally exhausting, and equally as incredible. I’ve been a camp counselor before, and I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until I was surrounded by 14 middle schoolers who I was expected to shepherd. It reminded me of and made me feel capable in the gifts the Lord has given me. During the week, we went into High Schools and I got to exercise another gifting I haven’t been able to use much since Nepal: preaching. Each of my teammates was expected to come up with a 45 minute teaching and share it with a classroom of High Schoolers. I gave a teaching on following the Lord’s calling for your life based on delighting in Him, and I loved it. Through the misbehaving, the chatting, the lack of sleep and the eye rolls, working with students gives way to the amazing potential (and huge responsibility) that even one of them may be changed by the words you have to say, or by the way that you love them. Getting to participate in this sort of ministry all month was nothing short of a blessing, only second to the incredible family we gained along the way.
I don’t even have words to describe our hosts. Sassy, loving, wise and comfortable, we fell in love with them right away. The “work hard play hard” type, we’d sit around the table for dinner with them, play games with them, do ministry work with them, and adventure with them. Their intentionality was through-the-roof amazing. One day Jonette told me “your team has such willing hearts to serve here. Your great attitudes make it that much easier for us to show you hospitality.” It was a more than ideal host-team relationship. Jonette and Matthys (and their two BEYOND precious little boys) set the most beautiful example of family for us.
Tarina, our camp director, can barely even be considered our host at this point; she’s more a part of our team. She led us and trained us well, let us serve alongside her, then even trusted us enough to give us ownership over running the camp program. One night in a late-night-after-meeting one on one conversation with her (one of my favorite parts of the month) she told me “before your team came, I prayed that God would allow us to bond in friendship, not just partnership. It’s so much more fun to serve God and others alongside people you love and like. I hoped that we’d be great friends.” I’ve never seen a more clear answer to prayer.
If I detailed to you every moment of the month that I loved, I would lose you in pages and pages of gushing. But, because I can’t fully resist, I’ll just give you a FEW more examples…
In our first week, our hosts planned a “fun day” for us. One thing everyone should know about me is that I LOVE surprises, so I was hyped. It was so much more than I could have imagined. They woke us up at 5am and kid–knapped us in the back of their truck to go watch the sunrise. They had us dress up in crazy outfits and “shake cans” on the streets of town to raise money for the ministry. They sent us all over town for a scavenger hunt which included everything from sampling local craft beers to being a part of the anointing and praying for a new Christian coffee shop, to put-put golfing and getting ice cream, to spending an hour coloring and watching dolphins at our favorite café by the beach. And that isn’t even half of it! It was clear that they had put tons of thought, effort, and local networking prowess into this day. When we got home, they surprised us AGAIN with one of my favorite activities on the race so far, home-made sand boarding on the local dunes! Check out the attached video for this one. Last, but certainly not least, we got home and sprawled out around on pillows in the camp hall where they’d made us crepes to eat, and we watched “The Little Prince,” a team favorite book, and incredible film. I have rarely felt as intentionally loved by anyone as I did by our hosts that day.
Next, our influence was so obvious, valued, and exhorted this month. We couldn’t ignore it. One particular woman, a mother of a student at one of the High Schools and a volunteer at a worship conference where we worked our last week, particularly invested in making absolutely sure that we knew the value of the work we were doing. Bev had met a previous World Race team, and that team had drastically changed her daughter’s life. Bev continually (we saw her several times and were blessed by each of them) stressed to us that we are vessels of hope, and have the power to create sacred moments that will impact the trajectory of people’s eternities. She carried herself in a way I’ve only rarely experienced, and we all adore her. We invited her to be a guest speaker in one of our team times. She shared her story with us, the good and the bad, and invited us higher. She even gave us her contact information and asked us to send along future wedding pictures and future baby pictures; she wanted to stay invested in our lives long after the month we’d spend in her city.
Next is my favorite moment with a camper. I led worship for the camps we participated in, and as a result, the campers were obsessed with getting me to sing for them. One of my campers who signed my Colorado flag said “you taught me lots about Jesus and you sing like a nightingale.” Honestly what more could you want in a compliment? Bedtime with 15 middle school girls can be tricky, loud, and frustrating, so I used my singing as a bribe to get my cabin (and sometimes other cabins, too) to sleep. If they promised not to talk at all and go to sleep directly afterwards, I would sing them a lullaby. Because I usually chose an extremely boring an repetitive song, and because they played HARD during the day, they’d all generally be asleep by the end. That night when I’d finished playing, I read my nightly before bed dose of bible. I read more than usual because I was having a hard time sleeping, and the light of a flashlight from one of the bunks caught my eye. Thinking it was one of my more rebellious girls, I whispered “it’s time for sleep now, turn that off.” The light didn’t go off, though, and I went to investigate. I climbed up to this top bunk and heard sniffling. Kayla, one of my younger campers was quietly crying, homesick. Noticing me, she whispered, “please don’t tell them,” not wanting her peers to know. It was so heartbreaking and adorable. I told her I wouldn’t, and asked if I could pray for her. She sweetly nodded and laid her head down as I whispered a prayer and scratched her back until she stopped crying and fell asleep. Kayla was such a sweet reminder, in a year where I can see such overwhelming evil and often feel helpless, that often the best way to serve is to intimately love one person at a time.
I guess I’ll end with thank you’s. Thank you UCSA/ VCSV for doing such incredible ministry all over South Africa on a consistent basis. Thank you to Andrew the surf shop guy for always saying hello. Thank you to the staff of the Tasty Table for serving me chocolate cake and Earl Grey tea that made doing my logistics expense reports bearable. Thank you to each one of my campers who raised their voices in worship and students who listened to my teachings. Thank you Jonette and Matthys for being our family in every way possible. Thank you Tarina (I know you’re reading this) for being vulnerable with us and serving J-Bay even better than you served us. Most of all thanks be to God, for an incredibly Abundant Month 6 in South Africa.
If you have any questions about this month or about this blog, post them in the comments! I would SO love to answer them.
Love Always,
Rachel
